The Apostle

The Apostle (1917)

El apóstol

Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film. Currently considered a lost film. Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen dreams about ascending to Olympus dressed as an apostle. He speaks with the gods about the deeds and misdeeds of the porteños, and how they laugh at him and every political program he sets up. A few congressmen appear, and express their positions. Yrigoyen discusses the level of chaos in the capital administration with the gods, and the government's financial situation. After the discussion, Yrigoyen asks Zeus for lightning bolts to cleanse Buenos Aires of immorality and corruption. Zeus grants his request; lightning bolts consume the city's main buildings, and Yrigoyen awakens.

Date of release
1917-11-09
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 10m
Genres
Animation, Comedy
Director
Quirino Cristiani

Interesting facts

El Apóstol is a 1917 lost Argentine animated film, directed by Italian-born cartoonist Quirino Cristiani and produced by Federico Valle. Historians consider it the world's first animated feature film. Production began after the success of Cristiani and Valle's short film La intervención a la provincia de Buenos Aires, lasting either less than ten months or twelve months; accounts differ. Its script was written by Alfonso de Laferrére, the background models of Buenos Aires were created by Andrés Ducaud, and the initial character designs were drawn by Diógenes Taborda.

Production

Federico Valle was an Italian-born industrial-film producer who produced a newsreel, Actualidades Valle. He hired Quirino Cristiani, known at the time for caricatures in daily newspapers, to help animate an experimental political vignette for Valle's newsreel.

After the success of La intervención a la provincia de Buenos Aires, Valle began working on the full-length film El Apóstol, which satirized President Yrigoyen, who won the 1916 presidential election as part of the Radical Civic Union and had a reputation for lengthy speeches and demagoguery. Valle hired Alfonso de Laferrére to write the script and Cristiani to serve as the principle animator.

To attract publicity, Valle hired the popular cartoonist Diógenes "El Mono" Taborda. Taborda liked the idea of bringing his caricatures to life and gave Cristiani sketches of the characters. Although Cristiani thought they were good, they were too rigid and detailed for him to animate. Taborda left the production, daunted by the amount of work needed to complete the film, but allowed Cristiani to make his drawings simpler and easier to animate.

It is unknown exactly how long El Apóstol took to produce, but it was quick for an animated film. According to different accounts, production took either a year or less than ten months. Filming was done in the studio Talleres Cinematográficos, using self-made voltaic arc lamps set up by Cristiani as artificial light. A total of 58,000 frames were filmed, clocking in at one hour and ten minutes.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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